


The Conductor's Allegiance

by ORiley42



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bev doesn't die because I said so, First Kiss, Fix-It, Happy Murder Family, M/M, Murder Husbands, Season/Series 02, TALKING srsly so much talking, and Abigail doesn't die either!, jailbreak, lets all enjoy Hannibal getting both his comeuppance and his fam, more nonsensical metaphor-laden convos than you can shake a stick at, relationships, running off to Europe together, this is an everybody-lives situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42
Summary: “At approximately 11pm, Beverly Katz shot Hannibal Lecter three times.” Jack stood before Will with features of stone. “Arm, shoulder, chest. The first grazed him, but the second two hit home.”The words crawled through the bars of Will’s cell, circling his feet before settling on the floor, glaring up at him with doleful red eyes.Beverly shot Hannibal. Three times.“I assume this wasn’t an accident in the gun range,” Will prompted when it became apparent that Jack was waiting for something from him—he’d give him something, of course, once he’d found it. Right now, his internal geography was recovering from a 9.0 on the shitstorm-scale.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 25
Kudos: 327





	The Conductor's Allegiance

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline-wise, this diverges right at the end of Takiawase, AKA, when Beverly pulls the trigger on Hannibal.

**_ Jack: Enter Stage Left _ **

“At approximately 11pm, Beverly Katz shot Hannibal Lecter three times.” Jack stood before Will with features of stone. “Arm, shoulder, chest. The first grazed him, but the second two hit home.”

The words crawled through the bars of Will’s cell, circling his feet before settling on the floor, glaring up at him with doleful red eyes. _Beverly shot Hannibal. Three times_.

“I assume this wasn’t an accident in the gun range,” Will prompted when it became apparent that Jack was waiting for something from him—he’d give him something, of course, once he’d found it. Right now, his internal geography was recovering from a 9.0 on the shitstorm-scale.

“No.” Jack’s hands were in his pockets, shoulders tight, his gaze pulled repeatedly away from the current moment as his sharp eyes faded and refocused in dizzying succession on some memory Will wasn’t privy to. “Beverly put Doctor Lecter down when he attacked her, following an attempt to arrest him for multiple homicides.”

Like a rabid dog, thought Will, insides writhing with victory and nausea. “So, he’s dead.”

“Unfortunately, no. He’ll be charged in the morning, if he survives the night,” Jack amended, “He’s in surgery as we speak.”

Of course, he wasn’t dead. Like Hannibal would let some small pellets of lead interrupt his life, his plans.

Jack coughed. “The irony of trying to save his life is not lost on me, I assure you.”

Will tilted his head, wondering what expression his face was transmitting for _that_ to be what Jack gleaned from it.

To try and clear up this apparent miscommunication, Will said, “I would be…put out, if Hannibal died now.” At Jack’s eyebrow raise, he clarified, “He has answers that I need. That you need too, Jack.”

Will’s late-night visitor looked deeply uncomfortable in a way the man didn’t usually allow to show. A wealth of reasons for this expressed themselves, but Will decided to begin probing in the region of legality—one of Jack’s favored grey areas.

“How did she get in?” Will stood from his cot, crossing closer to the bars to meet Jack’s eye. A discomfiting stance for both of them. “I know she didn’t have probable cause, other than my word, which has been considered neither probable nor causal as of late.”

Another heavy, ringing silence. Will flinched at it, the empty weight on his ears.

Jack cleared his throat again before answering in a tone befitting an FBI inquest: “She approached Lecter’s home with the intention of seeking an informal consultation. She heard screams emanating from inside when she arrived and entered the property to ascertain the threat level of the situation. Upon entry, she discovered…an abundance of evidence. Evidence that strongly indicates that Hannibal Lecter has killed many, many people.”

Careful study of Jack’s granite features revealed an unpredictable mix of truth and obfuscation. That something both more and less than what he’d stated occurred was clear; Will imagined the genuine version of events couldn’t be shared under Chilton’s watchful mechanical ears.

“If Beverly heard screams, then…what, he had a victim there, still alive?” This story about a call for help wouldn’t hold water in court if there was no living witness to pin it on. Will let his most disbelieving eyebrow take flight. Hannibal, after all, didn’t leave his pigs in a position to call for help. Pork should be eaten, not heard.

“After a fashion,” Jack replied, catching up to the moment but still, something was dragging him back. What albatross has flung itself around your neck now? Will wondered.

“Will, you’re being released,” Jack said, and Will found himself surprisingly—well, surprised. He’d imagined Hannibal’s capture would lead to his eventual exoneration. _Eventual_ , being the operative word when trying to struggle out of Hannibal’s spiderweb. “I’ve got the sharpest lawyer the Bureau could dig up in the middle of the night upstairs now, cutting through the red tape, though it still might not go through until morning,” Jack continued, hands leaving his pockets to clasp in front of him. Will watched the nervous gesture with wary eyes. What horrors could lurk beyond such good news? Had Jack found something so abominable in Hannibal’s home that he dreaded telling Will? Surely, after all the time they’d spent in the field, he’d know Will’s imagination drummed up worse nightmares than what material reality could provide.

“Spit it out, Jack,” Will prodded him wearily. “Whatever blow you think is so bad, that it can’t be cushioned by news of my release and Hannibal being shot repeatedly.”

“It’s not bad, Will. It’s just…” Jack was clearly at a loss for words and if he didn’t speed things along, Will was going to give him some words to chew on. The kind that would make Chilton clutch his pearls. Will was _tired_.

“Abigail Hobbs is alive.” Jack’s foot tapped once against the concrete, sending a tiny stamp crackling around the echoing subterranean prison. The words he’d spoken, in contrast, hung glittering like mist over a grey sunrise.

“Could you…repeat that,” Will heard a voice say, probably his own, but he wasn’t too sure about that sort of thing anymore.

“Abigail is alive,” Jack repeated, obliging. “Beverly found her, in Dr. Lecter’s basement. Alive and fairly well, albeit missing an ear and suffering from a smattering of the usual physical and mental symptoms of long-term stress. Nothing that some sleep and a few decades of therapy—administered by someone sane and not prone to cannibalism—can’t cure.”

Cannibalism. The word got its teeth into Will’s brain and he didn’t try and dislodge it right away, wary of tearing off chunks of himself with it. So, he sat with the relief-mingled-pain.

Jack knew. Everyone knew what Hannibal was capable of. That he’d had countless victims, what he’d done to them. And they knew what Will _hadn’t_ done. Straight from Abigail’s mouth—Abigail, who wasn’t dead. Whom Will had not eaten. Whom Hannibal had not eaten, either.

And that last had haunted him: even Will’s scar-readied mind hadn’t been able to accept that Hannibal had _consumed_ their little girl, who wasn’t really theirs or a child at all. But Hannibal hadn’t eaten her, because Hannibal hadn’t killed her. Or rather, he _had_ killed her, in name if not in body. Her death had lain sticky and secretive in Will’s chest this whole time, and that was real even if tales of her demise had been exaggerated.

It was magical. Real magic, not the kind that was bright and sparkly and righteous—the kind that humans had been telling stories about since the beginning.

Abigail had been dead, Will knew that. In the ways that mattered to him, and the ways that mattered to Hannibal, and the ways that mattered the Abigail, she had been dead. Abigail, who Will now imagined emerging from weeks in Hannibal’s basement—crawling out of her coffin to resume her interrupted life.

“Well, I see why my release is being expedited,” Will finally commented with the fraction of his mind that was free for such pleasantries as conversation.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “Kind of hard to keep you locked up for murdering a woman who isn’t dead. And the FBI is dropping all charges on the other crimes, pending investigation. Even a cursory examination of Hannibal’s…staging area gives strong indication that he had the means and opportunity to frame you for everything you’ve been accused of.”

“Hmm,” Will nodded vaguely. “Well. I didn’t see this coming.” He stood still for a moment longer, and then laughed. It was frightening, and if Jack were less of a consummate professional, he’d have jumped in alarm. “And he—” Will was still laughing, between each word, “ _he_ didn’t see it coming either!” He smiled up at the ceiling and imagined Hannibal lying pale, intubated, heart beating meekly as he clung to life, splayed out on an operating table like a frog in a junior high dissection class. “Something we have in common. Beverly Katz,” Will shook his head, smile downshifting into something less manic, more genuine. “Surprising us all.”

**_ Beverly: The Conquering Hero _ **

The first thing Will did upon his release was find Beverly. He didn’t even bother with a change or a shower, deciding the BSHCI’s paltry facilities and the clothes he’d been committed in would have to do. Jack had returned for Will the next morning when Dr. Chilton finally, begrudgingly released him into the wild. He drove Will in cautious silence back to the BAU’s headquarters and left him at the entrance to the lab. Will went forward on his own to find Beverly who was, as usual, up to her elbows in bits of dead people.

“Well, look who’s back!” she exclaimed as soon as she spotted him, looking up from an oddly pristine severed leg, complete from foot to thigh bone. “How’re you doing?”

Will smiled and the gesture tugged uncomfortably at his cheeks with its sincerity. “Pretty good. Considering.”

“Considering,” Beverly agreed. They stood there for a long heartbeat, just looking at each other.

“They, um, they don’t make cards for this occasion,” Will finally said, his scenic route to the point of this conversation.

“Damn,” Beverly snapped her fingers in a parody of regret, “Hallmark letting us down. They should start a line—sorry cards for false imprisonment, thank you’s for heroic forensic staff…”

“I am so grateful, the feeling is bigger than my ability to express,” Will said in a rush.

Beverly’s jaw dropped, and she tried to cover it by stripping off her gloves and lab coat, setting them aside so she could join Will away from the grist and gore of her work.

“You’re…welcome, I guess,” she tucked her hair behind her ear, “Or, you know, not like you’re _not_ welcome, it’s just…I didn’t take down Lecter for you. Just for you.”

“I’d be concerned if you did,” Will agreed readily, “and that’s a big part of why I’m so thankful. I’m so glad it was you, Beverly. _You_ did this. And you did it for all the right reasons.”

Beverly really didn’t know how to deal with that, except to nod and try to accept the enormity of the compliment he was doing his utmost—if awkward—best to convey.

“And I think…” Will trailed off, almost thinking better of it, but then plunging forward, “I think I’d like to hug you. For. You know, saving my life.”

Beverly’s face lit up with surprise and delight. “Really?”

“Yeah, _but_ , the feeling will probably fade within seconds and not return for at least a decade so if you wanna take up this offer—”

Beverly leapt forward, throwing her arms around Will’s middle. He let his arms settle slowly, indecisively, around her shoulders. Her hair was in his face and it smelled of too-sweet manufactured vanilla, her leather jacket was squeaky-smooth under his hands. It was nice, Will decided after a moment. Nice.

“Thank you, again,” he repeated, not sure if hug-protocol encouraged or discouraged talking, but figuring gratitude rarely went awry.

“You’re welcome,” Beverly said from somewhere in the neighborhood of his collarbone. “But it was sort of the least I could do. I should’ve believed you.”

“I mean, yeah,” Will agreed.

Beverly pulled back and shoved his chest good-naturedly. “Seriously, dude?

“I _mean_ , everyone should have,” Will clarified, raising his hands in surrender. “But you did something about it—you saved me. And god, who knows how many other people. Alana, Jack—any of them could’ve been next.”

“Yeah. You should talk to her, you know.” Beverly’s face had turned solemn, and Will’s matched suit.

“I do know. I’m not looking forward to it.”

“It’s not like it’s going to get easier if you wait.”

Will sighed and Beverly immediately mocked his long-suffering expression, tugging a reluctant chuckle from his disused sense of humor.

“I don’t think I have much choice,” Will grumbled, “Jack already told me she’s waiting at my house with my dogs.”

Beverly chewed her lip, lifting both palms and levering them up and down as if weighing items on a scale. “Hmm, dogs versus hard-hitting emotional conversations?”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered finding new dogs. And a new house, if need be.”

Beverly groaned and grabbed Will by the shoulders, turning him in a forceable about face and marching him towards the door. “Go. Talk. You can come back and share a beer with me once you’ve taken your proverbial medicine.”

“I’m sorry, is cheap beer shared in a mortuary supposed to be a lure or a threat?”

_“Go!”_

**_ Alana: Farewell Tour _ **

Will fell to his knees, a smile ripping free as his dogs flowed out of the house like a furry avalanche, tails wagging and tongues lolling. They battled for his attention and he did the best he could with two hands and eight dogs. Wait, eight? He hadn’t been imprisoned for _that_ long.

“Who’s this?” Will patted the unfamiliar speckled dog’s rump as the creature turned his back on Will to return to Alana.

“Applesauce. She’s mine.” Alana shrugged her shoulders. “She likes applesauce.”

Will’s smile made another break for it. Applesauce.

As Alana came closer, it became clear that her neatly made-up eyes weren’t red or blotchy. Just cool, pensive, clear. Will wondered if that’s because the crying was over or if it hadn’t truly begun. Alana didn’t look like she was in shock, exactly, too alert for that. Not glassy or frightened more…determined.

“I’m glad to see you free, Will,” she said, cutting straight to the point, “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” Will was glad he had his dogs so close, he needed something to hold on to.

“I was so blind,” Alana said, the first note of uncertainty, of tender wounds, sounding in the short phrase. Will was glad for the familiarity.

“To be fair, he worked very hard to blind all of us,” Will consoled her cautiously, “And especially you.”

“I don’t know how to take that.”

“It’s complimentary, if not comfortable. He respected you enough, cared for you enough to want to shield you from the parts of himself that would destroy you.”

“That’s not a courtesy he showed you,” Alana followed the trail of thought, sounding unconvinced. “Except, it seems to me that no one got to see more of him than you—and isn’t that the greatest compliment he could pay?”

Will stood, wishing he could go inside, put a table or at least a cup of coffee between them, but it was clear this conversation would not wait for niceties.

“The moment I realized who Hannibal was, what he was…” Will had to let the shudder roll through him; he’d learned it was no use fighting the power of those memories. “It shook my moorings so badly, worse than just about anything I can remember.”

Alana’s eyes were sharp, searching. Looking for a way to survive this, perhaps? Well, she would be the first Will told if he figured out that secret.

“I’ve only been building my self into the scaffolding of his person suit for a matter of months.” Will treaded carefully, struggling to empathize with Alana. Perhaps because what she was experiencing was too similar to differentiate from his own sensations. Or too different to recognize. “You’re having to rip out and reconstruct years’ worth of hollow walls and termite-stricken support beams.”

“Your imagery is shockingly accurate, as usual,” Alana smiled, wan and tired. “I feel hollow, precisely. Like chunks of my emotions have just been scooped out. A cold and shivering nothingness where affection used to be.”

Used to be, Will repeated to himself. That wasn’t how he felt at all. Sitting here, Alana’s emotions sliding eerily alongside his own now made them all too clear—and he didn’t like what he saw clinging dark to the inside of his heart.

“You really don’t feel….” Will let the thought die before birth, knowing as the words tried to escape that they weren’t ready to leave the nest.

Alana, however, was able to trace the vague trajectory, brows furrowing in concern. “What do you feel for him, Will?”

“It would be easier if I felt nothing at all. Or even just good old-fashioned hatred.”

“Mixed feelings are perfectly natural.”

“There’s nothing natural about the mix of these feelings.”

“Well, perhaps natural is over-rated. Friendship is natural, trust is natural. And look where it got us.”

Will frowned, reviewing these words and coming up confused. They sounded more like something he would say than Alana would. Surely, empathic mirroring wasn’t contagious?

“Not that I’m giving up on either concept,” Alana continued, still strangely cool but seeming to sense Will’s unease, “Just attempting to…declaw them. Vulnerability is the only way to truly connect with others, and I refuse to have my kindness weaponized against me again.”

“What does that look like for you? This disarmament of your emotional susceptibilities?”

“In the short-term, it looks like reaching out to some of Hannibal’s former and current patients.”

“A Hannibal-trauma support group? I’d watch your back, sitting down at that table.”

“I’m thinking less of gathering and more of mapping. Seeing the movement of his poison, and attempting to stem the flow, if possible. Before anyone else dies.”

Digesting the underlying logic of this made Will’s stomach flip, somewhere between disgusted and intrigued. “You think he planted other seeds of death? More killers out there, in the world?” he asked, tone bland and neutral.

“I _know_ he did. _You_ know he did, it’s what he tried to do with you. Turn you into something you’re not. Or at least, something you don’t want to let surface.”

“Ouch.”

Alana’s responding grin was lopsided, pained, and Will wondered again if it was possible that she was absorbing the bleed of his feelings and tendencies, and not the other way around. “It’s not an insult,” she clarified, tone neither sympathetic nor judgmental, “That you work to make sure what Hannibal saw in you never manifests is admirable. A saint’s virtue in paradise pales in the light of an ordinary man battling demons at his hearth.”

He heard it now, what had hurt too much to recognize. Hannibal’s voice, speaking through other’s mouths. Will had heard it in his own mind, in Dr. Chilton, in Jack, even in Beverly. How many tendrils had spread that now needed to be ripped out? Could it be done, without sacrificing the structure? There was a strength and beauty in words drawn from Hannibal’s stream and Alana, it seemed, had chosen to re-appropriate this resource rather than banish it. Will admired the bravery, even as he pondered the consequences.

Alana cleared her throat, prompting Will to wonder how long he’d been lost in his head. It had been some time since he’d practiced the skill of replying in typical rhythm to other’s conversations—it wasn’t a courtesy he’d felt compelled to drudge up while strapped down in prison grey.

“Well,” Alana said briskly, “I assume I don’t need to say that whatever we had, isn’t here now.”

Will took the statement for what it was: fact, not insult. “I still don’t know what we had, but rest assured, I’ve already mourned its mysterious passing.”

That wry grin again, so familiar. Hannibal, Will, Alana, Jack, the others that came before and after. All dipping toes in the same pool, some drowning, some fleeing.

Alana slipped her hands in her coat pockets, shoulders back and almost relaxed. “Should I even say that dreaded sentence, the one with ‘still’ and ‘friends’?”

“We’re more than friends now. Bonded by something deeper, something that can at best scar away over time.”

Alana nodded. “I concur. And I think that this more-than-friendship we possess is the kind that makes shared company akin to picking at unhealed scabs.”

She whistled to Applesauce who trotted obediently to her side. 

“We’ll lick our wounds in peace,” Will agreed. “But if Applesauce ever gets lonely, she’s welcome to come visit her step-siblings.”

Alana stepped forward, closer than she’d gotten throughout this whole scalding conversation. She held out a hand to shake. The offering was a comfort, a path forward that left behind professional curiosity and feelings unsafe to be acted upon. He accepted her hand and shook it, borrowing Jack Crawford’s sure stance and steady soul and sharing it in the gesture. A peace offering of his own.

She smiled again, this time with a trace of her old warmth.

“Goodbye, Will.”

“Goodbye, Alana.”

**_ Abigail: Homecoming _ **

The drive to Wolf Trap was quiet. They’d hardly spoken earlier, at their reunion. Will had just held out his hand and Abigail had taken it. It had been clear to both of them that all things needing forgiveness were forgiven, and all things needing explanation could wait.

Neither Jack nor the state-sanctioned psychiatrist (Alana had met with Abigail earlier, hugged her, and then excused herself from the case, to their mutual relief) monitoring Abigail’s recovery thought it was a good idea for her to live with Will. Will and Abigail didn’t think there _were_ any other good ideas. Abigail wouldn’t hear of returning to any sort of hospital or group home and neither would Will, though he kept that to himself for the sake of appearing like the calm, rational adult he needed to pretend to be to win Abigail’s temporary custody.

Custody. What a ridiculous phrase, to apply to a grown and capable woman. They needed each other equally; Will would be as much in Abigail’s custody as the other way around. Again, he didn’t share this insight. He simply and resolutely insisted that Abigail’s mental and physical health would be best served by spending time in a nice, quiet country home with the company of someone who understood her trauma and had a flock of friendly animals to keep her safe and happy.

Jack was more easily convinced of the plan than expected. This led Will to believe he’d been on their side all along and simply played devil’s advocate to make more convincing his eventual concession to Will’s logic.

This left Will and Abigail pulling up the old farmhouse in Virginia, Abigail toting a small suitcase filled with freshly purchased clothes and toiletries. Everything Hannibal had bought for her was evidence, or “triggering factors,” as her new shrink had said. Abigail wished she had the beautiful vintage print scarf Hannibal had procured for her just last week. The age of the fabric, the wear and tear that enhanced its beauty, comforted her more than anyone could know. Well, except Will. He knew.

She smiled at him when he clumsily went to open the front door for her, trying to keep the dogs back with his legs so they didn’t knock her over. She didn’t mind their canine excitement, however; she welcomed it. She dropped neatly to the ground once they were inside and asked Will to introduce them to her, one by one.

Several of the dogs lost interest once it became clear she was neither a threat nor bringing food, but Winston, in his loyalty, settled himself with his head on her ankles. Will was deeply, piercingly proud of both the dog’s good taste and of Abigail’s calm, pleased acquaintance with his home’s furry residents. A small part of him had worried it would be too much, but she seemed to find their low, soft, rumbling presence as comforting a tether to reality as Will did. Like father, like daughter, thought the tiny, dangerous part of Will’s psyche that had adopted Abigail as his own before he’d even met her, when he’d been stepping blind into Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ mind.

“You know, a little while ago, I asked Hannibal if I could get a cat,” she announced casually, still ruffling Winston’s ears, “Thought it might make things feel less lonely.”

“What did he say to that?” Will asked, finding himself in the familiar position of having no idea what Hannibal might’ve been thinking.

She sighed. “He said it would be irresponsible, since we wouldn’t be able to keep it for long.”

Will couldn’t hide a startled twitch at that. It made Buster growl a warning at whatever had upset his large human friend. “He…” Will tried to say it, fumbling towards the truth he couldn’t quite perceive yet, “he knew he would be caught?”

Abigail’s mouth pressed into a thin, indecisive line. “He knew it would eventually catch up to him. I don’t think he thought it would be _that_ soon.”

Will traced the edge of her hedging and concluded, “He was going to leave.” That sat heavy in Will’s heart. He wished it were just the sting of justice potentially going un-done if Hannibal had slipped through their fingers.

Abigail’s expression hadn’t lost that longing aspect, wishing he’d understand without her having to say. But she did speak: “He wasn’t going to leave alone.”

The wistful note in her voice was unmistakable. Will wondered if she worried he’d judge her for it. He wouldn’t, not ever. He just wanted to understand—for her sake and for his.

“You would still go with him,” he said more than asked, “Or, go back to him?”

“Yes.” Her only hesitation was for Will’s benefit.

Quietly, gently, Will reaffirmed the practical truth: “I don’t see how you can.”

Her reply was immediate: “I don’t see how you can’t.”

Will didn’t see it either. Both sides of the equation were opaque and he couldn’t balance the values.

His internal conflict was perfectly visible, however, and Abigail seemed to relent. “It’s not your fault. He didn’t think you were ready yet.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Will agreed, “Too early in his plan. I’m under-baked. Failed to rise.”

“But!” Abigail held up an excited finger, “Did you know that if your dough doesn’t rise, you can knead more yeast into it and it can still be saved?”

Will blinked, “…Is this a metaphor?”

“No,” Abigail sniffed, “just a useful kitchen fact.”

Will snorted.

“Yeah, ok, maybe it was a metaphor. I’m just saying…” Her hand twitched towards the place where her left ear had been, pulling her hair forward in a nervous reverse of the traditional hair-tuck. “I guess I’m saying, now that we’re off-book…just let it play out. Whatever happens. Please.”

“Take it as it is,” Will nodded along, “Don’t overthink it. Don’t be too hasty to apply a moral framework.”

“Is that too big an ask?”

Will laid a hand on hers where it was draped protectively over the curve of Winston’s skull. “Not for you.”

**_ Bella: Insight _ **

“That you’ve never been to our home is a terrible oversight. I can imagine no better time to rectify it than now.”

Jack’s language was strangely formal, practiced, and Will could her Jack’s wife behind the invitation. It made him smother a grin. Will was tempted to play dumb and ask why this particular time was so much better than any other. However, he couldn’t deny a great curiosity in meeting the mysterious Mrs. Crawford, so he kept his sarcasm to himself.

The day of the dinner arrived and Will found himself in the supremely odd position of knocking on the door of Jack Crawford’s actual, personal house, and having the man himself open said door with a tomato-stained apron and a dusting of flour on his nose.

“Will, great to see you,” Jack smiled and ushered Will in, taking his coat.

Will couldn’t shake the sense of unreality. Perhaps it was the simple fact that Jack seemed genuinely happy. Will knew, abstractly, that many people developed separate personas for work and home that carried different stresses and attitudes. Neither Will’s work nor his unique mind had ever offered the escape of such disconnection. It became blazingly clear when Will saw the transformation on Jack’s face upon entering the living room and seeing his wife that Jack had perfected this internal split. He reserved his love for exactly one side of his life.

Will was deeply jealous of them in that moment, which was almost a comfort—that emotion, at least, was unmistakably his. And there were so many others floating in the air around Jack and Bella, beyond simple affection, the bittersweet of storms weathered and the tang of loss on the horizon.

“Will,” Bella held out a hand and he was struck with the sense that he should kiss her elegant knuckles, like royalty. She had such dignity, such grace. Will knew why Hannibal had been intrigued with her enough to preserve her life, beyond his desire to toy with Jack’s emotions.

Activating the social subroutines that had gotten him through most of life, Will managed to shake her hand and approximate eye contact without outwardly telegraphing any of his internal calculations.

“Please, sit with me,” she gestured to the space on the couch beside her and Will did as suggested with an only slightly awkward pause.

Jack hovered nearby and Bella gave him a fond sort of frown. “Honey, you’ve got something…” She beckoned with one sure finger and Jack leaned down so she could brush the flour off his nose, pressing a quick kiss to the spot when she was done.

“Alright, Jack,” she patted his chest, “This is where you subtly excuse yourself so that Will and I can gossip about our former therapist in peace.”

Jack nodded at her, that smile Will hadn’t been privy to before still in place. “Of course.” He sent Will a nod of his own, “I will now subtly excuse myself. I will be subtly preparing dinner if you need me.”

“I’ll subtly give a shout, if we do,” Will confirmed, agreeable.

Bella watched Jack’s retreating back until he was safely ensconced in the kitchen, leaving them with the quiet tick of a grandfather clock and leaves blowing against the window outside. Will considered if he should feel or act surprised at the quick dismissal of their only mutual acquaintance, but decided against it. Both he and Bella were aware of why she’d arranged this dinner.

“Have you seen him yet?” she asked as soon as she was certain Jack was out of earshot.

Will sat back on his heels. Firing live rounds right out the gate, are we, Mrs. Crawford? he thought to himself with a splash of humor.

Out loud, he chose to follow her example of skipping the bullshit. “No. Not sure I plan to.”

“Really?” The curious raise of her eyebrow had him mirroring her regal, sure pose—one leg crossed over the other, hands clasped neutral in the lap.

“I’ve been cleared of all wrong-doing,” Will shrugged minutely, “His crimes are rigorously documented by concrete, physical evidence. I don’t see that I should give him any more of myself, not when he took so much.”

“For someone who took so much, I imagine he has much to give.”

Will’s already considerable respect for Bella rose. “I imagine you may have a point,” he agreed.

“There was something he said to me…” she uncrossed her legs, the exercise eliciting a carefully masked wince of pain, “We were discussing quality of life and Socrates and cure…and I felt a curious sense of power.”

Will nodded. “You felt alive.”

“Very. But then Dr. Lecter was arrested, and I decided to add a few grains of salt to the advice I’d received from a murderous cannibal.”

She shot him a wry smile and Will easily matched it.

“Just a few grains.”

Her following sigh was deeper, more drained. “I’d be lying if I said he’d never helped me.”

Will nodded, careful. “Same.”

“We discussed more than just the cancer. He understood the way death filters into every aspect of life. How that makes it meaningful.”

Will modulated his breathing, stifling the panic threatening to engulf him in this moment of serene understanding. It was too much like sitting in therapy with Hannibal, sitting here with Bella’s quiet refinement, and still more _un_ like being with Hannibal given Bella’s lack of menace.

“We discussed legacy. I got the sense we shared a common lack of clarity on what we wanted to continue on after us, if we wanted or cared about anything after the end of us at all. I know that I don’t regret not having children. Jack thinks he does, but he doesn’t really. He’d regret them if they were here, being neglected, as they would be. Or the work he’d be neglecting if the guilt of fatherhood caught up to him. And I don’t say this to activate any latent daddy issues on your behalf, especially now that we’re both out a therapist…” Bella laid a calming hand on Will’s suddenly tense forearm. “I say it only to explain why it hurts him so much. When you look at him like you do. The anger, and worse, the disappointment.”

At this, the only disappointment Will felt was at his own inability to mask his emotions. He didn’t regret Jack knowing how he felt, or at least, part of how he felt.

“I’m not demanding forgiveness on his behalf, quite the opposite,” Bella continued, removing her hand, giving Will space, “Put him through the wringer like he deserves. His stubborn beliefs require battering on a regular basis or they grow stolid and irritating. I ask only that you give him the chance to weather your stony glares and slowly shortening indignant silences. To earn back your trust.”

Will shared his curiosity with a tilt of the head. “Why would you think I’d deny him that opportunity?”

“I’m just making sure,” Bella answered delicately. “Dr. Lecter made me feel that flight was the most…cheerful option. I thought perhaps the desire to run might beat in your chest too.”

“There’s something beating in there, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Guess you’d better find out. Before it finds you.”

Will leaned back again, the force of the words unavoidable, but damned if he wouldn’t try. “That’s kind of ominous,” he noted.

“Hey, I’m dying a slow and painful death—ominous is my God-given right.”

They shared a grim smile.

“Ahem…”

The two looked up to find Jack peering around the corner, knocking theatrically on the doorframe. “Dinner’s ready, if I may… _subtly_ interrupt your little confab.”

Bella couldn’t help but grin at the worn-out joke, like an old slipper, comfortable and reliable. Will ached for what they had, and more so for what they must so soon lose.

“I’m ready,” Bella announced, before turning to Will and assuring him quietly with a conspiratorial grin, “and it’s all vegetarian. At my insistence.”

A surprised laugh bubbled out of Will, and he wished fervently that he’d met Bella earlier. At the same time, he understood precisely why Jack hoarded her company all for himself.

He stood and held out his elbow to Bella. “If I may offer you my arm, good lady?”

It was Bella’s turn to laugh at the exaggerated manner, and she took the assistance gratefully.

“And if I may ask you one favor…” she whispered as they walked slowly towards the dining room.

He nodded.

“Say something nice about the lasagna, even if it’s unbearable. Jack’s a brilliant man, but he’s a worse cook than I am, and that’s saying something.”

“Of course. I promise, on my recently-exonerated honor.”

They laughed again, to Jack’s patient amusement, as they were seated.

They ate dinner and already, Will missed Bella Crawford very much.

**_ Hannibal: Enter Stage Right _ **

“I’m going to see him.”

“Hmm.” Jack tapped the file he was holding sharply on his desk, once, twice. “See, that sounded to me like a statement, not a request.”

Will didn’t say, ‘funnily enough, it was,’ but his eyes conveyed the sentiment.

Jack sighed and sat heavily down in his chair, which was already a more acquiescent response than Will had hoped for.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jack concluded, steepling his fingers.

“I know it’s not a good idea,” Will agreed without delay, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. That I don’t _have_ to do it.”

“Where I’m sitting, you don’t _have_ to do anything. You don’t even have to testify against him, you’re free to never see him again!”

“I’ll never be free if I don’t see him again.”

Jack’s frowned deepened another few millimeters and Will idly wondered if one day the flesh would scar the bone beneath. He also wondered if he should mention that the visit was technically Jack’s wife’s idea in the first place. He quickly nixed that for the sake of avoiding the wrath of both Crawfords.

“I would like to say again, for the record and for my own conscience, that I still think this is a bad idea. Bad for _you_ , Will, as a person that I care about.”

“Noted. And…noted.” Will tried to look gracious, but he was out of practice.

Jack swept open the folder he’d been toying with in a practiced motion, settling his gaze on its contents. “Alright. You’ve already been granted visiting permissions. If Dr. Chilton tries to raise a fuss, let me know, I’ll set him straight. And if you don’t come back out after an hour, I’m sending in a SWAT team.”

“To rescue me from Hannibal or Dr. Chilton?”

Jack shot him a single warm, yet warning, glance. “Whichever gets in my way.”

Will held onto those words, hoping they weren’t said entirely in jest. Walking back into the BSHCI felt like entering a mortuary and laying himself down on the metal table. He appreciated the promise of backup if he sensed the descending knife.

Dr. Chilton managed not to raise a ruckus at his prodigal patient’s return mainly because he was unaware of it, called away to deal with some sort of emergency in another wing of the hospital. Will was escorted quickly and efficiently into the deepest bowels of the building, further even than he himself had been kept.

He had to fight a strange instinct to walk back towards his old cell, as if Hannibal would be there. It seemed the natural conclusion, since they’d switched places so completely. Surely, it was time for Hannibal to inspect the same rusted plumbing and crumbling ceiling that had been the extent of Will’s sight for so long.

But the orderly took Will on an unfamiliar path to a shiny new enclosure of steel and glass rather than iron and concrete. Naturally, Will thought, Hannibal had secured himself a higher order of prison.

Hannibal, however, did not look like a higher order of anything. For all that the intervening weeks had helped him heal, a man of fifty did not just bounce back from multiple gunshots to the torso. Will found Hannibal reclining rather gracelessly on a stripped-down hospital bed inside the bizarrely spacious cell. A stack of books stood on the smooth wooden table beside him, along with a plastic cup of water. Hannibal’s eyes were on Will before he even entered the room, their weight putting lead in his step as he crossed the threshold. He traversed the shadows to the illuminated strip of hardwood set against the glass, coming to a rest in this no man’s land. He waited for the heavy thunk of the outer door to sound before making his opening salvo.

“You look like shit,” Will announced, hands in his pockets.

Hannibal’s mouth twitched with irritation or a smile, it was difficult to know which. “I see freedom has not dulled your eloquence.”

“Freedom has been great. Sleeping in my own bed, seeing people without bars or cuffs intervening…” Will rapped the glass barrier with his knuckles.

“Yes, I imagine you’ve been simply giddy.” Hannibal struggled upright, throwing off the thin blanket and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Will watched, fascinated with the show of weakness.

Hannibal took slow, measured steps to join Will at the barrier. He pulled his shoulders upright, though that must hurt like a son of a bitch, feet planted exactly the same distance from the glass as Will’s were.

Hannibal’s eyes flicked disdainfully over the reflections dancing on his transparent prison. “If Ms. Katz were less of a crack shot, it would be she trapped behind glass.”

Will tensed, the images crashing over his consciousness without warning. The dissection, the display. Jack’s tears, Will’s knowing guilt.

Rather than engaging with the frankly unrefined emotional blow Hannibal had tried to deal, Will instead parried with, “You’re speaking rather openly, for a man with an upcoming mass murder trial.”

“As are you, for a man who’d sooner eat his own ears than let Frederick Chilton have access to his words again,” Hannibal shot back.

Will pursed his lips and gave a half-nod, pulling back his jacket to reveal a modest gray box—an audio jammer, courtesy of a very contrite Dr. Zeller.

Hannibal matched his nod, pleased.

“And don’t think I’m going to let that ear comment slide,” Will snapped, “like Abigail wasn’t self-conscious enough about the scar on her throat. She lilts now, like a daisy that can’t find the sun.”

“I noticed.” Hannibal’s hands rested clumsily at his sides. It was almost unnerving to see him in such disarray. “But she will get used to her altered appearance and be stronger for it.”

“Is that what you were doing? Making us stronger? Because last time I checked, you’d taken both our lives and used them up. Consumed them. All we can do now is piece together the fragments we clawed out when we sliced open the wolf’s belly.”

“And yet what was once broken can be made so much more beautiful than it was—a lesson well encapsulated by Kintsugi art.”

“I don’t think there’s gold dust in the cracks of my pottery. Just blood and dust.”

“But don’t blood and dust make for an even more beautiful vessel? Clay-red of the earth, sturdier and truer than shining mineral.”

“A vessel, huh?” Will took a different tack, beginning to pace. It was a small and perhaps childish revenge, watching Hannibal stand still without the energy to match his movements. “In the early days of our relationship, you said Jack was the one who thought of me as fine china. Have I become so inanimate in your eyes?”

“There’s nothing inanimate about what you’ve done. Although I’ll admit I feel envy that Humpty Dumpty put himself back together without my horses or men, I cannot deny that I also feel joy at seeing your remarkable wholeness.”

“Remarkable indeed.”

Hannibal looked so pleased. Will’s doubts about whether coming here was a good idea were no longer doubts—this wasn’t just a bad idea, it may prove a fatal one.

“The teacup came back together again.”

Will’s step fumbled, and he didn’t bother to recover. Hannibal had spotted the weakness, there was no use denying it. “Does it count when you’re the one who shattered it in the first place?”

“You tell me.”

Yes, Will told him without the nuisance of words. Yes, it counts.

“Do you want me to be impressed with your magic tricks? Awed by your mastery of illusions?”

“What is illusory about rebirth?”

Will scoffed, “Am I reborn?”

“You are still in gestate if I were to have my guess. As am I.”

“What will you be when you emerge from the cocoon of your sickbed?”

Hannibal’s answering smile made something push and press inside Will’s chest, like a moth trying to tear itself free. “When I emerge from this bed, from these bars, it will be your rebirth that is complete, not mine.”

“When will your rebirth be, then?”

“When I see what you choose to do with me.”

One of fate’s cruel tricks, thought Will. Hannibal had taken the greatest of existential positions: whatever circumstances he found himself in were those he most desired, no matter their quality. What he had was what he wanted, and if he didn’t have it, he didn’t want it. What a searing unfairness that Will could have gained everything he wanted and still have lost. Will slid seamlessly from his own fractured psyche into the quiet glee of Hannibal’s, reveling in Will’s return and the delicious novelty of lacking control.

Will, now, was the one amused. “I wonder…where did you miscalculate?” He pressed his tongue against his teeth in thought, letting it peek out of his mouth as he wandered the paths of what had and had not been. “In all the machinations and manipulations and turns of fortune and blind fate. What didn’t you see?”

“I could not predict Beverly Katz, in my basement, with a gun.”

Will’s head jerked, irritable. “No, not that. Beverly made her own moves. I’m referring to yours. Leading not to your own imprisonment, but mine. Yours is the product of happenstance and a brave person’s marksmanship and determination. But perhaps…” Thoughtfulness settled over Will like a fresh blanket of snow. “Perhaps it was your goals that needed greater refinement.”

“I’ll admit, I tinkered with my goals a great deal.”

“You wanted to tinker me right out of the cell you put me in.” Closer to the glass. There was the slightest tinge of desperation in the way that Hannibal now clasped his hands behind his back. Will drank it in. “Hannibal, if I was such a treasured toy, why did you put me on such a high shelf?”

“Perhaps I realized people don’t belong among the dust-ridden books and dolls and wooden trains of childhood.”

“I had no idea I was ‘people.’”

“Neither did I.”

Will brushed this aside. “You started putting together a different puzzle, in the middle of the game.”

“My best piece is now missing from the box.”

“On the contrary,” Will wagged a finger at Hannibal, “she’s safe and sound in Wolf Trap.”

“And yet, I cannot see the whole picture without her.”

“How does that feel? To be in the position you’d created for me.”

“The limits on my peripheral vision chafe,” Hannibal admitted, but his pain was as false as any other element of the persona he still hadn’t entirely shed.

“I’ll bet.”

That was all Will could stand for now. He could no longer predict his own reactions past the current microsecond, and that was beyond dangerous.

Without offering a farewell, since he figured their meeting didn’t need to end on such a blatant lie, he turned to go.

“Leaving so soon?” There was no flavor of sadness in Hannibal’s voice; Will imagined he was satisfied with all the new memories he could now replay and rewrite in the coming isolation.

“I think you deserve some time to rethink your strategy.”

A bitten-off nod. “It would seem to be in dire need of work.”

Will sighed. Every word he said gave Hannibal more power, but in a brittle and unwise part of his core, he enjoyed that. So, he said what he’d really come here to say, as cloaked in metaphor as possible to preserve some shred of dignity: “Next time, Hannibal, don’t bother trying to bluff me with some bullshit three of a kind. Don’t keep that royal flush tucked so close to your chest—just play the cards.”

Hannibal, setting aside metaphor for once in his goddamn life, purely to spite Will, said, “I don’t want our relationship to be built on shared love for Abigail alone.”

“And because of that choice, it was built on inequitable hatred and mistrust.”

A measured beat of silence. “ _Was?”_

Will raised one eyebrow, content to leave Hannibal with that mystery of past and present circumstance.

“Goodbye, Hannibal.”

**_ Hannibal, act 2, with accompaniment by Matthew Brown _ **

As all good things must end, all bad things stretch on, ad infinitum. Will’s plague of nightmares met no resistance since their cause went far beyond what Beverly Katz had put behind bars. He was still “that guy who didn’t kill all those people” to many of his co-workers, the students whose classroom he now headed with even less ease than before, even to the grocer and the lady at the laundromat.

At least Abigail seemed to have settled, finding a bit of peace in their quiet home. But there was something in her, like a breath waiting to be released, that Will couldn’t prod free. She wouldn’t hear talk of college and she had no interest in a job once Will assured her their financial situation was secure. He suspected she was waiting for the same thing he was, though she at least had the comfort of knowing what that was. Will’s mind knew him too well to let him see, protecting him from that truth.

He went back to see Hannibal again, holding out only a matter of weeks after the first visit.

Will timed his entrance to the BSHCI carefully, securing the company of the same orderly who had escorted him to Hannibal the last time. This was, incidentally, the same orderly who’d brought Will many of his meals during his stay.

It wasn’t until his release that Will was able to tag the man for what he was: a wolf in nurse’s clothing.

“Hello, Mr. Brown,” Will greeted him cordially, pleased when the respectful hail captured the orderly’s complete and utter attention.

“Hi, Mr. Graham,” Matthew Brown echoed, disguise slipping just enough to expose a fragment of hunger.

“I was hoping I could ask you a favor. I’d like to visit Hannibal Lecter.”

“You’re supposed to go through the main office for visits. ‘Specially for the big scaries in the back.”

“I know,” Will grinned, easy and familiar. “But I’d rather not.”

Brown grinned back, a slow thing dragged across one side of his lips and then the other. He gave a quick tilt of his head, cracking his neck, then spun on his heel and took off down the corridor. Will followed.

They walked side by side for a long while, Will subtly analyzing the confident, hobbling gait of his companion.

“It must be strange for you, to see me like this,” Will finally broke the silence.

Brown was breathless with recognition. Pupils like black holes.

“Yeah. Strange. But the good kind of strange.”

Will watched Brown watch him, dark eyes tracing the subtle growth of Will’s smile, lit for him and him alone.

They reached the door to Hannibal’s cell, Brown unlocking the heavy mechanism to the visitor’s causeway. His indecision was palpable as his fingers gripped the handle, torn between opening it and relinquishing Will and holding it shut to keep his prey close.

Will made the decision for him. He reached over to twist the handle himself, Brown’s hand skittering away from Will’s as if chased by sparks. “I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Will told him kindly. Then, without any further explanation, he stepped inside and let the heavy door clang shut on Brown’s astonished face.

“Back again,” Hannibal announced before Will could shift fully out of the skin he’d cultivated for Matthew Brown. Hannibal watched the subtle transfiguration with interest and Will let him see more of the change than he usually would.

“Can’t seem to stay away,” Will threw up his arms in self-deprecating defeat.

“I’m touched.” Hannibal’s eyes danced from where he sat cross-legged on a standard-issue bed, the more hospitable one long gone. “And grateful. Our last conversation left much unsaid, and more unpacked.”

“Don’t know if I have time to unpack the whole house we built around ourselves. Though, ‘unpack’ isn’t quite the right verb, is it? Not when you tore us down to our foundations. Where would we put all the boxes, the furniture?”

“I was less concerned with decoration than with those foundations you mentioned. I couldn’t build anew what had not yet been torn down.”

“Couldn’t you?” Will was cold and sure on this point. “You underestimate both our carpentry skills.”

“Yours, yes. My own, perhaps an overestimation.”

“If you’d just settled for a remodel, instead of demolition…” Will let the possibility hang like a thread of gossamer between them, only visible in the most perfect light conditions.

“Then what? Could you have scraped aside cobwebs in the attic of your heart for a houseguest?”

Will wanted to tell Hannibal that he could’ve had a lot more than an air mattress shoved in a corner for visiting distant relatives. He would’ve built him a whole damn addition, with heat and plumbing and better amenities then Will ever bothered to get for himself. He’d wanted to build that for Hannibal, _with_ Hannibal.

“Wouldn’t you rather be welcomed into a room I built than simply sit surrounded by your own handicraft? Elegant, perhaps, but dull.”

“To sink into the pleasures of one’s own creation is a unique delight. But perhaps it loses that brilliance and charm when it goes uncontended, without compare to the work of others.”

Hannibal rose purposefully and strode forward, looking vibrant and healthy despite the slightly unnatural hang of his healing arm, the surely painful compression of his irrevocably wounded heart.

“I think you were right, Will,” he said once he’d reached the glass separating them. The admittance lacked even an iota of humility. “I had entirely the wrong goal. One can hardly help but fail when they’re playing towards the wrong endgame.”

Will let his head fall slightly to one side, a subtler version of rolling his eyes at Hannibal’s skill in avoiding fault in his own missteps.

“My dear Will,” Hannibal repeated his name with something close to reverence, and it sliced more deeply into Will than anything— _anything_ —had in his life. “You said to me once, in these very walls, that you were seeing things clearly for the first time. I believe I am echoing your experience.”

“Good luck.” Will wished the words came out a snarl, but it was an unfortunately breathy delivery. “It’s not a pleasant experience—not when there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“And yet something was done, if not by you. A rescue was had.”

Astonishing. Will had to turn away at the sheer gall of it—an expectation of reciprocity buried beneath the passive voice and statement of fact. If Hannibal wanted reciprocity, then Will had a great deal more damage to inflict before any possibility of rescue would breach the horizon.

Barely managing the sudden flare of simmering fury, Will muttered, “Miracles don’t come in pairs.”

“Don’t worry,” Hannibal replied smoothly, “I have tempered my expectations.” He leaned away from the glass, a prelude to turning his back on Will but without the discourtesy. “Please, say hello to Abigail for me.”

Hannibal’s closing move. Cutting Will loose before Will could do the same. Will allowed it; it was Hannibal’s turn to twist the farewell knife after all.

“I will,” he promised, and left thinking about that quiet sense of power he and Hannibal had hypothesized about all those lifetimes ago.

**_ Matthew, intermezzo _ **

Matthew Brown was waiting in Will’s car. Not _next_ to it, but in it—in the passenger’s seat. Presumptive, but at least he didn’t expect to drive Will somewhere. Not that Will intended to take him on a ride either.

Will opened the door and settled in, unhurried. He addressed his first words to the windshield, grateful that this particular machination wouldn’t require extensive eye contact: “You thought I didn’t notice you.”

“Yeah,” Matthew agreed, “Was kinda…pleased that you didn’t.”

“Mm. It’s no insult to your camouflage, it’s spotless.” Will gestured briefly, delicately towards Matthew’s person. “It’s just that I’ve recently become extremely aware of killers in my midst…well, I don’t need to explain that to you.”

“The doc did the judge,” Brown said, listless.

“But you did the guard,” Will nodded. “I hadn’t expressed my gratitude for that yet. Not properly.”

“I didn’t do it for thanks,” Brown shrugged, “I did it for the person I thought you were.”

“Past tense?”

Brown stretched his legs as best he could in the confined space, thoughtful. “For a minute there I thought I’d been wrong. Now, I’m thinking that they’re wrong. Or, I guess, that they were right, and messed it up now.”

“So…I am who you think I am?”

“I don’t think you are who _you_ think you are.” Matthew looked closely at Will, chewing his lip. “But I’d really like to see who you become.”

Will turned to him, marveling at the similarity in language. Was there some sort of sign blinking over his head, shouting in neon, ‘hello! I am undergoing a dangerous and terrifying personal metamorphosis!’? But, he supposed, his apparent transparency had its uses.

“You’re the second person to express that sentiment to me…” Will trailed off significantly.

“Lecter,” Brown concluded.

Will nodded. “He’s been essential in my…becoming.”

Matthew moved so slowly, it was strikingly reptilian. With every passing moment, Will wondered more how he hadn’t seen it earlier. Or, if Brown was shedding his skin and letting Will see the scales underneath. “Guess I did make a mistake. I thought _you_ were the teacher.”

“Oh, but aren’t we all students of life, really?” Will said airily, producing his car keys and a thin white card from an inner pocket. “Anyway,” he tossed the slightly tattered business card onto Matthew’s lap, “if you ever want to join the class…give me a call.”

Brown didn’t respond, except to develop another slow, cancerous smile. He left Will’s car in a breeze of disinfectant and slick arrogance.

Will realized as he drove home that the idea of turning Matthew Brown over to Jack and the authorities for his crimes hadn’t occurred to him once.

**_ Abigail: Leaving Home _ **

“Was there a plan?” Will asked without prelude as he and Abigail sat in front of the fire that night, surrounded by their pack.

“Hmm?”

“To leave.”

A beat of silence as the flames crackled and Abigail pondered.

“You mean, for Hannibal to leave?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Will furrowed his brow.

“It was for all three of us,” Abigail explained, and Will’s heart took flight—with all connotations of motion sickness and disbelief and fear of heights intact.

“Were we going to Europe?” Will asked, once he was sure he wasn’t going to be sick.

Abigail nodded. Her fingers stroking Winston’s fur didn’t shiver, even a fraction. “Italy.” She smiled, eyes peeking up at him. “You should see the photo he has on the passport he got for you. It’s so old, you look like a baby. I told him you’d never get through security with it, but he wouldn’t listen. I think he sometimes forgets the rest of the world doesn’t see you like he does.”

“…Like a baby?”

“No,” Abigail laughed, “like your outside matches your inside, and whatever you have outside is irrelevant if it doesn’t match what he sees inside. And he thought—he thinks…that you’re luminous.”

“That’s me, a glow-in-the-dark infant.”

Abigail laughed again, and Will almost couldn’t bear to ask what he had to ask next: “Do you know where he kept it? And the rest?”

Her laughter petered out, but her eyes didn’t darken like he’d feared. They glowed. “No,” she admitted, licking her lips, “they weren’t in the house. Not safe enough. But I think we could find it all if we work together. The passports, the money, he’d even bought some stupid fancy luggage, though he hadn’t put much stuff in it yet.”

Will smiled at the image of Hannibal in some unbearably chic boutique, examining luggage sets. The smile softened into something sadder as he pondered what Hannibal might have been thinking of during the process. The three of them, visiting buildings older than anything Will had seen before. Art. Cuisine. More personal moments, their trio growing into a family in their new home. Will’s imaginings turned darker as he followed Hannibal’s natural instincts down dark alleyways: a gore-splattered kitchen, the streets of Florence turned into a ghastly canvas, strong hands guiding Abigail’s as she held a black-red-dripping knife…

He shuddered as he tried to pull himself out of the beseeching, drowning images, Abigail’s lightly worried features guiding him back to shore. Her concerns were politely watered down after weeks of co-habitation.

Will reached out to touch her cheek, imagining that the freckles on her skin burned more fiercely under his hand than the rest, tiny constellations of pain on his palm. “I know I haven’t been to you what I should’ve been,” he began, fumbling and clumsy with these feelings that were so truly his own, “Done more, and not enough. But I’ll do it now—whatever more or less you need. I’ll…” He didn’t know how to say it. “You don’t have to…if you don’t want to, then—”

“I’m coming with you. Both of you. You couldn’t stop me.” Abigail’s tone was confident and true, only slightly belied by a touch of fear in her eyes. But Will trusted her words. He knew she said aloud what she wanted to be true, and she knew herself enough to say only what she could make into truth.

“Unless…unless _you_ don’t want to go?” She was reflecting his negotiation of her internal state back at him, frowning and squinting, “But I thought…”

“I think I might always be of two minds about Hannibal,” Will tried to answer as honestly as possible, letting his hand drop. She picked it up quickly and held it in both of her own. “And I can’t promise which will win out at any given time. But I can promise to do my best to ensure that you don’t suffer as a consequence of my perennial indecision.”

“That sounds fair. And I think, once you make the choice, once you really commit to it…well, it’ll be hard to back out when you’re stepping onto the tarmac in Rome.”

Will imagined the peace he could feel if that came to pass. He held that fragment of divination close to his heart, like a flickering candle guiding him through the night.

“You’re right. Then there’ll be no backing out for any of us.”

**_ Bridge and Trio _ **

Thunder cracked overhead, lightning illuminating the employee entrance to the BSHCI.

“The blond suits you,” Matthew grinned at Will as he slid his keycard through the reader, green light clicking on and admitting them both.

Will just growled, resisting the urge to fiddle with the itchy yellow wig and feeling like a spectacular idiot. He knew that the synthetic thing actually didn’t look too bad, all things considered. Abigail had made a similar comment when he’d donned the costume earlier, saying that if he had to bleach his hair to disguise himself in Europe, it wouldn’t be entirely horrible. All positive reviews aside, Will’s experiences so far did not support the oft-cited hypothesis that “blondes have more fun.”

As they passed a clutch of other employees, packing up their things to make room for the night shift, Will adopted the slumping pace of Jameson, the orderly who usually accompanied Brown on his evening rounds. Jameson was currently enjoying an unexpected night off at home, having received a very convincing call from “the head office” informing him they’d accidentally over-staffed. Matthew had expressed minor disappointment that he wouldn’t get to kill the man Will was replacing, but Will had assured him it was cleaner this way, and there’d be death aplenty later.

Brown whistled the _Mission: Impossible_ theme song under his breath and Will gave him a sardonic nod—the go-ahead. Something that sounded like thunder crashed in the distance. It was followed by an electronic whine and a last gasp from all the lights before they were dipped into pitch black. Will had been privately concerned that the simple, remote-controlled explosive wouldn’t work. Of the three devices he’d constructed and detonated in the field as practice, only two had gone off as expected. Also, incidentally, Abigail had gotten a dangerous light in her eyes as she watched the explosion, and Will wondered rather paternally if she’d have a talent for arson.

The independent generators kicked in almost immediately after the facility’s connection to city power was severed. This returned basic functions but failed to compensate for several secondary ones, most importantly, Chilton’s surveillance system. Now, they could work in relative peace.

All the locks were, of course, fail-safes not dependent on external energy sources. This wasn’t a problem, Will was actually relying on functional power for his plan. He’d cobbled together a clever little device that could latch on to electronic signals and mirror them, allowing him to locate and activate the particular frequency that managed the lock on Hannibal’s cell. (God bless the internet—it could teach you anything). The little machine barely weighed an ounce and looked like a garage door opener, but it had worked on the trial-lock Will had procured earlier. He had to hope that Chilton and his ilk weren’t above using Home-Depot-grade equipment.

Matthew had the key for the physical lock leading to Hannibal’s enclosure. They exchanged a curt nod and Will went inside the inner sanctum, leaving Brown to guard the entrance.

Hannibal was dozing, artfully laid out on his bed, but he stirred at the sound of the external lock. He was on his feet by the time the door closed behind Will.

Will stared at Hannibal, who stared back at Will. Hannibal blinked.

“Will?” He took a step forward, as if slightly unsure whether this was reality or an apparition, “May I ask what you’re doing here, wearing an orderly’s uniform and an admittedly rather fetching wig?”

Will rolled his eyes and snatched the wig off his head. No need for costumes in the dark. “What do you think, dickhead? This is a rescue.”

The shocked little “o” of Hannibal’s mouth—at the audacity of the rescue or, more likely, at the uncouth language—was so utterly charming, Will could’ve laughed. Yeah, he thought to himself as he began the delicate process of unlocking Hannibal’s cell, this may not be the right thing to do but it’s sure as hell what I _want_ to do.

“Forgive me for being selfish,” he said out loud, not caring that it made little sense without his accompanying internal dialogue.

Hannibal approached the still-locked door from the other side of the reinforced glass, curious and with a strange flighty quality in his usually sure footsteps. “I’ll forgive you for close to anything. Although, I feel I should withhold this forgiveness if I could bargain with it to achieve the same quality from you.”

Will bit his lip and held his breath as the makeshift electronic lockpick cottoned on to the correct frequency and attempted to jolt the device’s actuator. The door opened with an anti-climactic little puff of air, and no alarms blared. Will stared through the crack in the door at Hannibal, standing mere feet away with nothing to protect them from each other.

“For what you did to me, forgiveness is irrelevant,” Will declared, pushing the door open further, light and oxygen fleeing from the confines of one space to the next. “You put our teacup back together, Hannibal.”

Hannibal didn’t step forward. The rational part of Will wanted to hiss at him to get a move on, they didn’t have all day, this was a _jailbreak_ for crying out loud. But he could feel the robin’s-egg delicacy of the moment, fragile and eminently breakable.

“I know why you didn’t just tell me about Abigail, about any of it,” Will continued, picking each word out from inside himself with a bloodied pick-axe, tossing the raw diamonds to Hannibal’s feet. “I know why you wanted me to go through this, to become something else. And I am becoming—not what you wanted me to be, and not what I wanted to be, but something else. I can’t be the person I feel clawing at my ribs to get out, without you. So…”

Will gestured pointedly from where Hannibal stood to the door behind Will, the path to their escape.

Hannibal did move then, pushing forward with confident steps but grinding to a halt the moment he got into Will’s personal space.

He was close, too close for comfort, as the song goes. They were practically sharing breath. The intent was unmistakable, and yet, Will wondered if he was making a mistake.

It hadn’t occurred to Will that Hannibal might want to kiss him, or that Will might feel an answering urge in himself. It seemed altogether too mundane, for one thing. And insane, for another. But here they were.

Will moved jerkily forward, not closing his eyes, and pecked Hannibal on the lips. His aim was mediocre and it felt incredibly strange. He let his hand drift up to briefly touch Hannibal’s cheek and that felt strange too, but not because he wanted the strangeness to end, rather, because he wanted to expand it by an order of magnitude.

“Alright,” Will muttered, mostly to himself, “we’ll figure out whatever… _this_ is, when we get where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?” Hannibal asked instantly.

“Hardly be smart to say that out loud in a bugged room, even if I think I’ve disabled the systems.”

“Quite right.”

“Was that a test?”

“No, genuine curiosity.” Hannibal’s hands hung electric at his sides, and Will could feel how badly he wanted to return the touch. Will wondered if he was waiting for permission or simply a better time, or if Hannibal still questioned the unreality of it all. “Although I had hoped for many things, few of my wonderings dared go so far afield as this. And so, I have very little idea what might come next.”

“Well, I’m personally thrilled to be keeping you on your toes, rather than the other way around.”

“So am I.”

Will wanted to kiss him again and do it properly this time, but they had more pressing matters. He pulled a crumpled jean jacket from inside his uniform, where it had been imitating Jameson’s paunch, and shoved it at Hannibal.

“Put it on, no complaining.”

Hannibal put it on, with no complaining, though the delicate rise of his nose illustrated his disgust with allowing denim—and another person’s denim, at that—touch his skin. Once the trademark grey of his prisoner’s uniform was sufficiently disguised, Will took Hannibal’s hand so he could pull him to the door, throwing it open.

“Doctor Lecter,” Matthew greeted him as soon as Will towed him out into the hall.

“Hannibal, meet Matthew Brown,” Will jerked his head from one man to the other, “Matthew, meet Hannibal. All acquainted? Let’s go.”

Minor chaos flowed around them, muffled by the sluggish disinterest of tired patients and contained by the limited night staff. Although the thunderstorm would dilute concern about potential tampering with the electrical systems, basic procedure meant the highest security locations would be surveyed first. As such, they had exactly no time to waste in getting Hannibal out of the dungeon and into the much-less-monitored employee locker room. From there, it was a straight shot to freedom.

Will knew from his surveillance of the facility and from Matthew’s insight that Dr. Chilton couldn’t be bothered to spend evenings, much less nights, in his hospital. Still, a part of him hoped that they would chance an encounter with the man—Will had business with him that he’d rather not leave unfinished.

But it wasn’t Chilton who found them, mere feet from the door Matthew had smuggled Will in through. It was just a guard, an older man with white hair and an upturned, porcine nose. He laid his hand on the butt of his baton, suspicious at the trio and squinting through the darkness at Hannibal’s peculiar garb.

Will didn’t remember the guard from his stay. He had no idea if the man was cruel or fair, an old hand at jailing or a newbie here to make up for retirement’s financial unkindness. He got a glimpse of it though—grandfatherhood, a fondness for gambling, a recent personal loss—in his eyes before Matthew Brown leapt forward and rammed a short, serrated blade into the man’s throat. He died quickly and quietly, blood gushing from his body too quickly for him to process what was happening before it had happened.

Will waited for the customary wave of nausea and horror at the sight of such death, but it never arrived. He glanced at the two killers he had on either side of him and wondered if he was simply absorbing their lack of moral outrage, or if this reflected an absence inside himself that had never before been free from the echoes of others’ cries.

This philosophizing took a necessary backseat as Brown rounded on Hannibal, eyes somehow arctic and wild at the same time. Will clocked what he was looking for before Hannibal did—Matthew wanted approval. A pat on the head from the master of murder. Will knew Hannibal had no intention of doing any such thing, and that would send Brown into a fury. Will was counting on that.

“Thank you, Matthew,” Will spoke instead, clasping Brown’s arm, “You’ve done well.” The words were trite and empty, reverberating like a warning in the grubby corridor.

Brown’s presence was unwanted now that he’d served his purpose. Marring, a fly’s guts smeared across a Camaro’s windshield. Will didn’t hide that in his expression.

“Yeah, I _did_ just about everything,” Matthew sneered, “Don’t remember why I bothered bringing you along.”

“This was my idea,” Will let his smile ooze, patronizing, “You could never had done it alone. But I’m afraid we already have plans for a trio, and don’t need a quartet.”

Will reached into his pocket and Matthew sliced the dripping knife up towards him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Only one person on the planet had managed to raise their weapon more quickly than Hannibal’s hands could move, and she wasn’t here.

Brown hit the ground with the kind of brutal gravity enacted on fallen marionettes. Hannibal brushed his hands together briskly, looking torn between pleasure at the kill and annoyance at the bland efficiency of snapping Matthew’s neck.

“Serves him right for turning his back on you,” Will noted mildly.

Hannibal knelt quickly to rifle through Matthew’s pockets. “The alternative would’ve been to turn his back on you—hardly a wiser option.”

Will smiled, a small thing. He pulled the keys to Matthew’s car from his own pocket—he’d lifted them as soon as they entered the building—and jingled them merrily in Hannibal’s face.

Hannibal sighed, but it was a proud sound. His knees cracked as he rose, and Will saw how pale this much exertion had already turned him.

“Let’s go.” Will hooked their arms together and pulled Hannibal out into the rain.

**_ Coda on the Orient Express _ **

“It’s a little on the nose,” Abigail pointed out as soon as the attendant had finished stowing their luggage, leaving them to settle into their compartment, “but I think Agatha Christie would find it kind of funny, a band of…people like us,” she said delicately, “riding this train, for real this time.”

“I agree,” Hannibal smiled as he settled gratefully into one of the plush seats.

The journey had not been easy on him, injuries aggravated by travel. First a long drive—they’d dumped Matthew’s car a few miles from the hospital, Abigail waiting for them in a pre-designated location in a used car purchased with cash the week before. They’d driven through the night to reach the airport in Columbus. Hannibal was baffled and moderately offended at this foray into the Midwest. Will said that was exactly the point—who could imagine Hannibal the Cannibal in Ohio? From there, it was a flight to Amsterdam, and a bus to Paris (again: Hannibal’s gall at the idea of boarding a _bus_ was so great as to be adorable). Now, finally, Hannibal’s rarified taste—and increasingly desperate desire for comfort—were met by the lush upholstery, antique wood fixtures, spectacular dining, and obliging staff of the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express.

They’d booked passage in a violently expensive “cabin suite,” consisting of two already-luxurious compartments connected by a door, offering Abigail some privacy and Hannibal space to rest. Despite this stated need for rest, Hannibal seemed unusually excited to attend dinner in the restaurant car—fancy dress required, which was enough to dull Will’s own excitement.

Will understood why when he saw Hannibal’s face, laced with quiet pride as he escorted the two of them past the white-suited waiter and into the black-and-red lacquered walls and fiery velvet chairs of the dining car.

Abigail, glimmering in a gold floor-length gown with her hair swept neatly over the left of her face to curl elegantly at her shoulder, looked like a shy starlet escaped from the silver screen. Will wore an impeccably tailored black dinner jacket paired with an ice blue tie that made his eyes glint dangerously from beneath dark curls. And Hannibal, of course, looked like a mystery-wrapped dream, dressed in a more understated-than-usual gray silk suit, accented with ruby red at his throat, his heart, his wrists.

Will felt that the three of them were stars of a film, looking more than a step above the other patrons. Although the wealth required to travel on such a train meant there were no clip-on ties or ill-fitting jackets to be seen, there was something approaching royal in Hannibal’s bearing, and it spread like gold filament to the confident cut of Will’s shoulders and the entrancingly demure flutter of Abigail’s eyelashes—no one else could compare. A slight murmur passed through a group of nearby women, and an older couple stationed near the car entrance stared openly at them. Will met Hannibal’s eyes and replicated his smile, thrilling to the roles they had all stepped into.

The maître d’ seated them, Will closest to the window and Hannibal near the aisle, Abigail across from Will. He informed them of the evening’s menu as Hannibal perused the wine list, ordering something French and expensive that Will was sure would complement the venison in cranberry sauce impeccably.

They’d nearly finished the starter course, lobster with truffles, when the waiter ushered over an unobtrusive sort of man to fill the fourth seat at their table. Abigail’s mask slipped a bit, uncertain at this unfamiliar railroad custom of strangers as dinner partners. Hannibal, naturally, wasn’t at all perturbed and welcomed the newcomer.

Mr. Harris sold steel. He liked to watch soccer. He was recently divorced and had no children. These facts summed up his person almost exclusively. Will would’ve been bored out of his mind, except that such a drab specimen of humanity provided an inadvertently perfect backboard for their new family to perfect their temporary characterizations.

The cheese tray came around to punctate the courses, and Hannibal speared a sliver of something more blue and speckled than Will usually dared to purchase for himself. He tended to stick to cheese of the American and/or pre-shredded variety. Sensing Will’s hesitation, despite it being fairly well disguised by a veneer of bored sophistication, Hannibal offered it to him. He fed Will the fragment of Bleu d'Auvergne, fingertips of one hand brushing his lips while the other alighted briefly on his chin. Will didn’t particularly care for the flavor, but he enjoyed the delivery. Abigail stifled a grin, pressing her chin to her chest. To his credit, Mr. Harris didn’t blink an eye at the intimacy, and Will was pleased not to have the night shattered by that kind of coarseness.

His judgement of the evening’s quality and coarseness came too soon, however, as the unpleasantry was fated to occur as they finished their dessert of candied, chocolate-drenched orange. Mr. Harris pleaded satiety and neglected the course, offering a goodbye. He made to stand, hands dropping below the tablecloth as if to press against the seat and lever himself upwards.

At the movement, Abigail nearly leapt out of her chair, eyes wide in that unmistakable combination of fear, embarrassment, and fury sparked by the unwelcome pinching fingers of a strange man.

“I’m so sorry, excuse me, I still don’t have my train legs,” Mr. Harris apologized as if the motion of the car had simply bumped them together, but Will knew damned well the reptile shifting behind the eyes of a man whose grey face and non-threatening slump had excused him from such “accidents” far too many times before.

He mentally removed the small kudos Harris had received for his pleasant lack of homophobia, and replaced it with whatever the opposite, negative judgement was, in infinite proportions.

“Excuse me,” Hannibal raised a polite finger as the man turned to walk away, “Might I ask for a business card? I like to keep track of the interesting people I meet on these journeys.” Harris was charmed by Hannibal’s bland smile, procuring a card from his jacket pocket and handing it over with a brisk nod and additional farewells. Hannibal watched him leave with even more interest than he’d displayed upon the arrival of the main course.

Abigail glowed at Hannibal’s actions, and Will wondered if she was already trying to figure out which of the train’s cars were best to hide a body in. If only the great mechanical beast was still powered by coal, Will thought idly, we could chop and burn the pieces with relative ease.

“More wine, my dear?” Hannibal tilted the bottle in Abigail’s direction and she shook her head with a polite no. Beneath the pleasantries, the exchange read something like: ‘are you alright?’ ‘yes.’ Will’s heart nearly cracked his ribs, listening to them.

Despite her apparent recovery, Will and Hannibal silently agreed to bundle Abigail back to her compartment sooner rather than later. They bid her goodnight once they saw her settled in, closing the door that joined their two rooms, and nodding with satisfaction when they heard the click of the lock on her side. They were raising a smart girl. And a well-armed one—Will had seen to it that Abigail had a neat 9mm packed in her checked luggage, retrieved within the hour of exiting airport security.

“The curtain comes down,” Hannibal noted, sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed. “Did you enjoy the performance?” he inquired as he watched Will strip off his jacket and loosen his tie. Without the comfort of the part to play, the costume strangled him.

“I did,” Will admitted, hanging each layer of clothing in the slender closet until he stood in rolled-up shirtsleeves, kicking off his shoes as the last measure.

The room had been rearranged in their absence; the table and chairs disappeared and the beds unfolded from their alcoves, sheets laid out in military precision. Hannibal reclined near the head of the bottom bunk, the strength held in his chest all night draining away, leaving him with terrible posture and closed eyes. Will enjoyed the sight.

“You know, someone should have shot you a long time ago,” he said cheerfully, dropping down on the bed next to Hannibal, ducking his head so as not to bang it on the upper berth. “It’s done wonders for your personality.”

Hannibal cracked a single eye open, both disdainful and amused. “If you were the one who’d chosen to shoot me, dear Will, I’d have considered allowing it.” He closed his eyes once again and Will took the opportunity to move closer, unobserved. Not that he really kidded himself that Hannibal wasn’t intimately aware of his every movement, his every breath, but it was easier to do this without those iron eyes on him.

Carefully, trying not to put too much pressure on Hannibal’s taxed body, he eased himself between Hannibal’s shoulder and the compartment wall. There really wasn’t room for two grown men to sit like this on the narrow mattress, but with Will mostly in Hannibal’s lap, they made it work.

Hannibal’s breathing shifted from labored to content, arm slipping out to wrap around Will’s waist and pull him closer. Will let his nose dip to press just under Hannibal’s jaw, tucked comfortably into his side.

Hannibal pushed the window curtains open and flicked off the lamp, allowing the darkness of the chamber to equalize with that outside. The speeding wildlife beyond the glass came slowly into focus, grey-green blurs set against inky black and the occasional pinprick of stars.

Will let his fingers settle and flatten against Hannibal’s chest, right where Beverly’s bullet had pierced him. He imagined the flesh felt cool, a bit of Hannibal that had died in advance of the rest and not quite made it back.

Hannibal laid his hand over Will’s, pressing both their palms against the scar until it must have ached. “I think of this moment often,” he started in gentle, quiet tones. “And I think of how even now, I could see her life ended. From a different continent, with another’s hands.”

Will closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. Sweat, pine, a new aftershave Hannibal had picked up with great interest in the Amsterdam duty free shops. “If you wasted all that Abigail and I have given you on such petty revenge, I’d kill you, leave your body in the gutter, and never think of you again.”

Will felt Hannibal’s lips melt into a smile, pressed against this forehead.

“And it’s not just Beverly,” Will continued, almost petulant and enjoying the sensation. “I like Jack. And I like the idea of Jack alive. Alana, too. I like to think of them learning to live their lives around the holes we’re leaving behind. It will be easier for us to move forward if something grows in our wake.”

“Urging us on with their bursting lives.”

“Yes. You’ve always favored carving over cultivating. Perhaps it’s time to sing another tune. At least change key.”

“It’s not that I’m averse to change,” Hannibal’s hand slid up Will’s back, reaching to toy with the ragged edge of his curls, “Merely wary of its unforeseen consequences.”

“You don’t like when the conductor’s baton changes hands.”

Hannibal considered for a moment, fingers stilling. “No. I don’t.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“Might I ask some in return?”

Will tilted his chin, waiting to hear the question before confirming or denying.

“You have not yet killed directly, not as I have,” Hannibal stated. “Do you intend to keep your hands clean? Is that part of the bargain you’ve struck with yourself, or with God, or with me?”

“Or with Abigail,” Will added this possibility, nearer the truth than the others.

“Killing her father made you feel good.”

“Killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs was…complicated. Whatever I felt from that death—power or tragedy or otherwise—was drowned out by morality and obligation, consideration and consequence. The mathematics of right and wrong broke the back of purer understanding.”

“The current circumstances are different?”

“Entirely.” Will felt his smile had grown extra teeth as it stretched his lips. “My feelings are clean and clear. Underlaid only by a quiet, untroubled…sense of power.”

“Perhaps this is the path that lies ahead of you. Of us. More of the same, with variation.”

“You’d divert your passion for the culinary arts into…what? Tax fraud? Forgery? The re-appropriation of fine objects?” Will tried to imagine Hannibal as some sort of high-end burglar and only ended up imagining him in Catwoman-esque black leather, which nearly reduced him to hysterics.

“Although you apparently find the prospect amusing,” Hannibal purred, eyes flashing, “I am not set against growth. I’m not married to my current…”

“Method of beautification?” Will offered.

“One may call it that. But I am open to creating beauty in other ways, even those as theatrical as…hmm, were you imagining art theft? Or some other, equally victimless and non-violent crime?”

“Don’t suppose you find crime worth the bother if it’s free of victims and violence.”

“It does seem rather a lot of effort for little reward. But to this, I would speak not of violence and victims but of vigilantism.”

“I have no intentions of donning cape and cowl. Italy doesn’t need Batman.”

 _Even if you are my Catwoman_ , the part of Will that was always cackling in the back of his head added silently.

“What do _you_ need, Will?”

Will stilled, letting himself think about the question rather than simply parrying back. He raised a cautious hand to trace one finger along Hannibal’s jaw, a slow, lingering touch. “I’m not sure yet. But I think most of what I need is within reach.”

Will could hardly bear the look his caress elicited from Hannibal’s ever-so-carefully controlled features. It sent him again and again down a rabbit-hole of ‘I can’t bear to break his heart’ and ‘but I won’t, I’ve already made my choice’ and ‘what if he breaks mine? Or Abigail’s? Then I’ll have no choice and it might destroy us both.’

Will retrieved his hand from Hannibal’s orbit and addressed a practical matter of his own. “You know, Hannibal, that _I_ know that you don’t solicit business cards for innocent reasons.”

“Do I know that?”

“Yes,” Will decided. “But what I can’t decide is if you telegraphed the move for my benefit, to gain my trust, or if you’ve simply lost your subtlety.”

“Surely, to achieve the former, I’d have to claim the latter.”

“And if it were the latter, you’d claim the former all the same. Oh, never mind. I don’t care,” Will squeezed his eyes shut and dug the knuckle of his thumb into his forehead where a headache always lay in wait, “I’ve resigned myself to a lifetime of your mind games.”

A cautious, calculating smile from Hannibal. “A lifetime? You foresee such longevity, for both of us, for our relationship.”

“For our family,” Will corrects firmly. “You’re never going to leave us, Hannibal. I won’t let you.” Will let Hannibal enjoy the bit of tyrannical affection before returning to the matter at hand, “And the choice is Abigail’s. The rudeness was visited upon her, she gets to choose what is visited upon the perpetrator. She’s our responsibility, Hannibal. And we’ve both let her down. Taken things from her we can never give back. Although I may be resigned to your manipulations, she shouldn’t have to be.”

“She chose to be here as much as you did.”

“ _Not_ as much as I did,” Will corrected him sharply, “But, yes. She made her choice. As I made mine. Now it’s up to you. I want you to _see_ , Hannibal. See what beauty can grow that’s not shaped by your knife. You tried to make us your living topiary, but that means you deny not just us but yourself the opportunity to see what art we create of ourselves, of our own volition.” Will took Hannibal’s chin in hand, not letting him look away, though he showed no signs of wanting to. “Don’t you want to know what you haven’t known before?”

“I do. So badly, I can taste blood in my mouth when I think of it being torn away.”

That look again, from Hannibal. It was so _much_ , Will couldn’t fathom having missed it before, and yet, its depth of feeling was too well-worn to be new. Was it somehow a product of the lingering wounds, the pain? The abrupt change in circumstance? Will’s declaration of intent through action?

Hannibal just looked so, so…lovestruck.

“Why didn’t you look at me like that before?” Will asked, the mystery grating.

“Like what?”

“Like you love me.”

Something shifted in Hannibal’s eyes—running the numbers, preparing the flowered phrases for planting. Perhaps just reconsidering the past in light of the present. “There’s no simile required,” he finally replied, “The manner in which I cherish you should not be merely compared to love.”

Will watched this newfound transparency in Hannibal’s features for signs of falsehood or forgery but found only raw edges and unrefined emotion. Stunning, and frightening, to behold. “I…I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Then do nothing with it,” Hannibal enclosed Will’s hand in his own, bringing it to his mouth to press a tender kiss to his knuckles, “it does not demand recompense. _I_ don’t demand it.”

“I think you’ll have it anyway,” Will whispered, “given time.”

“Then I am happy, and honored, to wait.”

The train rumbled onwards, to Venice and then on to their new home in Florence. Will kissed Hannibal for the second time, confidence and passion replacing the fear and confusion of before. They each felt safe in the hands of their conductor.

**Author's Note:**

> Kind thanks to this particular and all other passionate train guys of the internet, who provide great detail for lazy fic writers like me seeking to find all their research in one place: <https://www.seat61.com/Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express.htm> There are some lovely images of the various car interiors of the new Orient Express to Venice at that link!  
> Also, this description of Hannibal & Will’s first kiss here is very much inspired by what I saw/felt was happening with Eve & Villanelle’s—the acting of that moment in Killing Eve was just incredible, and I feel mirrors very much that explosion of “I feel !!!!! for you and don’t know how to express it” that Hannigram would also experience.  
> Also, Alana’s line about saints & demons is inspired by Sisko’s “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise” quote from Star Trek: DS9.  
>   
> If you enjoyed this story, I’d love to hear your thoughts!! <3


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